HISTORY ECOLOGY AUSTRALIANA
INTRODUCTION Ecology and Empire: Towards an Australian history of the world
(pp. 1-16)
Tom Griffiths
‘Ecology’ and ‘empire’ are words that suggest very different dimensions of life on earth; at times they might appear to be opposites. One is natural, the other social; one is local and specific to place, the other is geographically ambitious; one is often seen to he scientific, amenable to laws and exclusive of humanity; the other is political, quixotic and historical. Brought together under the scrutiny of scholarship, these worlds and world-views make for creative friction. But ‘ecology’ and ‘empire’ also had a real relationship. They forged a historical partnership of great power.
CHAPTER 2 The nature of Australia
(pp. 35-45)
Eric Rolls
Australia Eric Rolls suffered four major disruptions, each of them essential to its The first occurred 75 million years ago when it near the South Pole as part of Gondwanaland. It snapped away to begin life on its own. There are wondrous geological relics of its life with the rest of the world. At Mount Narryer in Western Australia, one of the earth’s shields has come to the surface, a first crust formed 3,800 million years ago. It is a profound experience to touch those rocks; one feels the whole of life.
CHAPTER 3 The fate of empire in low- and high-energy ecosystems
(pp. 46-60)
Timothy F. Flannery
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the expansion of British imperialism had resulted in the establishment of settler societies on all the habitable continents. The environmental conditions that the settlers encountered were highly varied, encompassing a greater variety of soil and climatic conditions than are present in Europe. This chapter examines the fate of British settlements in Australia and (much more briefly) North America in the light of local environmental conditions.In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the prevailing view was that the colonial outposts of Australia would coalesce and grow to form a great nation.
- 248 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm. #030424
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